Urge DEP to clean up MTBE leak

That's what Lower Saucon Township panel tells council.

October 11, 2002|By Kevin Pentón Of The Morning Call

Lower Saucon's Environmental Core Committee is warning township officials to keep a close eye on the state Department of Environmental Protection's monitoring of a shuttered Route 378 gas station with gasoline additive leakage.

The former Texaco near the top of South Mountain on Route 378 is being monitored by its owner, Motiva Enterprises of Houston, for leakage of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, and benzene, two chemical compounds that are added to gasoline to help it burn cleaner, according to DEP records.

Committee member Hasem Hijazi, a civil engineer and vice president of Environmental Management Services, recommended to Township Council that it push the DEP to clean up the mess rather than just allow nature to take its course, a common solution to such problems.

"This is a serious matter," said Hijazi, who also lives across the street from the property. "We should have an interest in seeing that there's progress in this case."

The DEP is working with Motiva to ensure proper monitoring, said Mark Carmon, a spokesman for the agency.

"This is an ongoing case, like hundreds of others throughout the state," Carmon said. "I haven't heard of anything there."

The chemicals probably leaked when gasoline tanks were removed when the station was closed two years ago, said Shawn Frederick, a spokesman for Motiva.

Contamination has been limited to the property, Frederick said, and has been diminishing since the tanks were removed.

"We're comfortable that there's no off-site impact," Frederick said. "In the scheme of things it's a relatively small amount."

Company tests show that MTBE and benzene levels were at their highest, 14 parts per billion, in the center of the property soon after the tanks were removed, and are now at 2 parts per billion in the same location, Frederick said.

The state's limit is 20 parts per billion.

Recent testing conducted around the perimeter of the property and at nearby water sources showed contamination to be virtually nonexistent, Frederick said.

Researchers have limited data about what the health effects may be if a person swallows MTBE, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Web site.

The agency's Office of Water has concluded that while the health risks of low-level MTBE exposure is unclear, current data supports the conclusion that MTBE is a potential human carcinogen at high doses.

Acute exposure to benzene, which is fairly soluble in water, leads to an attack on the body's central nervous system and death, according to the EPA.